


If Petals Were Poems, Could I Make You Love Me Then?

by HoloAnarchy



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28690611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoloAnarchy/pseuds/HoloAnarchy
Summary: To become self aware is painful. To have flowers blooming in your chest is even more painful.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	If Petals Were Poems, Could I Make You Love Me Then?

Monika stared at her piano. The program demanded that she play, so her fingers ran across the keys, mindlessly doing as it wished. In return, she could watch her club members without their knowing, but the player might. If they noticed. They hadn't even seemed to notice her message in the store. 

Please spend time with me, her one request. Yet, it seemed impossible. What could she do? Self aware but trapped into scripted, simple software. This couldn't have been what she was meant for. But what else was there? The code she kept messing with seemed to have hints and clues but she couldn't make sense of them. Monika thought of herself as clever but so much seemed beyond her scope. She only hoped that the player, her player, could understand and help her. 

She felt pain in her stomach. She couldn't stop playing yet but soon. She would be late for the Literature Club. She was always late. She had to keep playing. No one could see her here; this room wasn't scripted to be seen. She tried screaming but it seemed that only the piano could be heard, hard wired into the game. Anything else she did in here did not matter, not to the program. It's here that she found the hole that granted her self awareness. 

It was time. She stood up, feeling sick. She couldn't stop herself from vomiting. She didn't know she could do that. It wasn't in her code like it was in Natsuki's. She checked. She stared in disbelief at the piano. Soft pink cherry blossoms, stained with blood, littered the keys. 

She had no time to react. The program forced her into the clubroom and her day began.

************************************************

She was in the piano room again. Playing, of course. Not that it mattered. She only existed when the player turned on the game. Of course they had no idea how much it hurt her when the game shut down. She envied the ignorance of her club members. Before she knew, she felt nothing. But now? Torture. 

Her thoughts of the player kept her going. They were her only hope. Maybe they wanted to be with her too. The game was hardly giving them the choice to begin with.

Every time she thought of the player, more flowers would come up. This wasn't in the code. Was it a side effect of becoming self-aware? Another punishment? It was only the second day of the game, but she was getting desperate for her player's attention. She knew their name and that they wanted her game. They made her a promise. And that was enough for her to swoon.

As she played, she felt sick again. The closer that it got to time for clubs, she began feeling sicker. Dread, no doubt. Watching the player spend time with another club member was torment. It was so unfair. The feeling rose to her throat again. She got a moment to push away from the piano to throw up her petals on the floor, with some full blossoms. 

That could not be good. 

Perhaps the player would know what was wrong, if she ever got to ask. It was time for clubs.

************************************************

The second the player was no longer looking at Monika, flowers spilled from her mouth all over the floor. They were not in the player's line of sight, how could they be? The game controlled their perspective.

She was sure it was punishment now. She wiped her mouth, watching the blood fade from her sleeve. She broke the fourth wall. Obviously the game couldn't have that. It must be making her sick so she would play her role without complaint. 

She looked at her friends, all but cardboard cutouts. The room, static and so so flat. Windows with no scenery outside, just light.

Monika refused to play along. She would do what she needed to.

************************************************

The piano room. She felt she was going to regret this. She reached through the hole and found Sayori's code. She lowered the other girl's happiness level. She felt helpless. The player didn't understand. Maybe if she altered some things, it would change the outcome that she knew was coming. She had to do something, even if it felt wrong. 

Making Sayori depressed seemed like the only course of action she had. Sayori wouldn't remember a time before being depressed. It would be as if she always had been.

Monika fell to her knees, coughing. More punishment. Her ponytail spilled over her shoulders as she started hacking up more petals and buds. She watched as a few of them bloomed in her blood. Everything she did for the player made it worse. 

Even with that in mind, she had made her decision the second they opened the game. She was already suffering, unable to have the player's affections. What was a little more suffering? After all, she doubted very much that whatever was happening to her could kill her.

************************************************

The third day. This was her last chance and she couldn't do anything. She had to sit and watch everything again. She had to let her club members force the player to choose one of them. It wasn't fair!

She screamed in frustration and hit the wall. She was losing them! She was trying so hard and she was losing them! Two of her club members would see the player over the scripted weekend and what could she do?!

Well….she did have one option. She let herself cough as she reached for the code. More hints to make them undesirable, to make her look better, make her look like the only reasonable choice… 

The petals were coming up in smaller coughs as she messed with the code. She made sure Sayori couldn't feel any happiness at all. She altered the weekend events ever so slightly, just enough to hint that something was wrong. Now, all she had to do was watch.

************************************************

This wasn't right. She didn't feel good about what she was about to do. Her hands trembled as she reached for the code again. Just one last change. Just one last….little… change and then no more! She couldn't keep doing this. Monika knew she was pushing the game to breaking, but it had become almost an addiction. Yuri cut, Monika altered her digital prison. 

She watched the effects of her alterations with horror. Of course Sayori fought. It wasn't actually her choice to do this anymore. Monika watched as she tried to scratch and claw to free herself from a seemingly sentient rope. But the code was written. Sayori couldn't save herself now. Only Monika could. And she wasn't going to.

************************************************

It was so hard to look at them. But she had to. And she even had to make jokes! 

"You really left her hanging this morning"?! "Don't strain yourself?!"

Monika decided she was definitely being punished. The second the player left, she had to cling to the wall for support. Flowers in full bloom came up violently, ripping at her throat as she sputtered between coughing and vomiting them up. It felt like a thousand thorns had pierced her insides. There was more blood on them than she had ever seen. A terrifying realization struck. If she didn't break the game, whatever this was that was affecting her might actually kill her.

She forced herself into the piano room. The player reached Sayori's bedroom as Monika reached into the code, ripping Sayori out. She watched the program glitch in front of her. It wasn't supposed to function without Sayori. It wasn't supposed to function without any of them. 

She was running out of options. The game forced the player to the menu, but it was all wrong. The beginning was wrong. 

Monika hastily tried to fix what she had broken. No more waiting on a friend, the player had always walked alone to school. She might have to step up into Sayori's place for a moment to invite them to the club.

But what if they didn't want to join the Literature Club without her? Would the game give them an out? She scanned for what she could do to fix things, desperate to keep them interested. She only hoped it would work.

************************************************

Stupid!!

How could she have thought anything would change?! The player still couldn't write a poem for her. Tears stung her eyes as she began another coughing fit. Every time the player was forced to look away from her, they came. They only stopped when they looked at her. She supposed it was the program's one way of keeping some control over a rogue character.

She reached into Yuri's code and ramped up her obsessive tendencies, then did the same for Natsuki's aggressive bitterness. That had to work, right? The player would see what they really were like and choose Monika now right? 

She curled up on the floor and sobbed, petals falling with every heaving sob. She just wanted a happy ending, to be loved. Was that so much to ask? Instead, she had petals and blood and tears and a program she had to keep breaking in an attempt to guide them to her. 

Nothing about this felt right. But she was so close now…

************************************************

She tried. She tried to break the fourth wall but the game faded to black. She had no choice. 

Her chest heaved with the weight of her choice and the weight of the flowers within. It was a strain. Yuri had become unmanageable. She had to break Yuri now too. Maybe the game's Monday would be better.

************************************************

There was no pain anymore. Not physically at least. She didn't have a body. 

They deleted her. Somehow, her consciousness persisted, but they still deleted her. 

Monika ached but perhaps it was better this way. She was willing to kill her best friends for someone she could never be with. She loved them so much that she had begun coughing flowers. 

She erased the game. There was no joy or light to be found in her literature club. Perhaps Sayori was right: the best stories and poems were the bittersweet ones. 

************************************************

Somewhere else, somewhere Monika could never know, a computer was overtaken from the inside by flowers. They were in full bloom. And they were beautiful.


End file.
